Green and Prosperous Land. Dieter Helm

      

      

       Copyright

      William Collins

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       WilliamCollinsBooks.com

      This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2019

      Copyright © Dieter Helm 2019

      Dieter Helm asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780008304478

      Ebook Edition © March 2019 ISBN: 9780008304485

      Version: 2019-02-04

       Dedication

      To Sue, Oliver and Laura, as always, and to Amelie of the next generation in the hope that the natural environment she will inherit will be in better shape for her to enjoy.

       Epigraph

      They paved paradise

      And put up a parking lot

      With a pink hotel, a boutique

      And a swinging hot spot

      Don’t it always seem to go

      That you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone

      They paved paradise

      And put up a parking lot

      Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell, 1970

      I thought it would last my time –

      The sense that, beyond the town,

      There would always be fields and farms,

      Where the village louts could climb

      Such trees as were not cut down;

      I knew there’d be false alarms

      [ … ]

      Things are tougher than we are, just

      As earth will always respond

      However we mess it about;

      Chuck filth in the sea, if you must:

      The tides will be clean beyond.

      – But what do I feel now? Doubt?

      Selected verses from ‘Going, Going’

      by Philip Larkin, 1972

      Contents

       Cover

       Title page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Preface

List of abbreviations

Introduction: Our natural capital inheritance

       PART ONE: The Prize and the Risks

Chapter one: The prize

Chapter two: Business-as-usual

PART TWO: Building a Greener Economy

Chapter three: Restoring rivers

       Chapter four: Green agriculture

       Chapter five: The uplands

       Chapter six: The coasts

       Chapter seven: Nature in the towns and cities

PART THREE: Principles, Paying and the Plan

       Chapter eight: Public goods

       Chapter nine: Paying for pollution

       Chapter ten: A Nature Fund

       Chapter eleven: The plan

       Conclusions: Securing the prize

       Endnotes